


Those Long Slow Days Are Far From Over

by megyal



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:51:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megyal/pseuds/megyal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is something in Sakura's hands that remind Kakashi of Rin's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Long Slow Days Are Far From Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [100demons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/100demons/gifts).



> **WARNINGS:** Bombs  & explosions; some pre-slash.
> 
> I was thinking about writing this story and I envisioned a shinobi/kunoichi dying, and talking these odd, disconnected phrases (a la Stephen King, a favourite author of mine, and I readily credit that little stylistic trick/tick to him).
> 
> I was very tired and unhappy at the time. Dear 100demons, this isn't plotty or action-y, and it lacks the slow burning characterization you had asked for, but I hope that in spite of all that, you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.
> 
>  **Beta:** Niko; any remaining mistakes are my own, and please point them out if you spot any.

Kakashi remembers that Rin had small hands. Generally speaking, Rin had been small all over: a narrow, compact body, tiny feet and ankles, slender wrists. Only her eyes had seemed large enough, and dominated her face. Instead of making her look more childish, the effect of her big eyes gave her an air of thoughtfulness and _oldness_ , as if she was the same age as her beloved grandmother, Fujiko.

Her hands, though; they had been fast, strong and sure despite their size. When she had bandaged his eye the first time, she'd skirted his flinches, slight as they were, with grim accuracy. She'd made sure that he'd hadn't been leaking chakra and blood out of his wound. When she'd inserted Obito's Sharingan, she'd bound his chakra pathways to that of the Sharingan, using long threads of her own chakra to connect them. Years later, whenever he had to be examined by Tsunade after he'd exhausted himself in battle, the Hokage would mutter darkly under her breath at the thoroughness of Rin's work.

In comparison to Rin, Sakura's hands are large. Physically speaking, Sakura is a bigger person; not just bodily, but just by virtue of sheer presence. Where Sakura yells, Rin had smiled and rarely offered a word. Sakura pounds Naruto in the head constantly, even now as young adults; Kakashi can't remember Rin ever doing that to either himself or Obito.

Despite this, there is something in Sakura's hands that remind Kakashi of Rin's. The Sharingan can recall the slightest detail, and has easily compared the shape of their fingers, the length of their thumbs. There is no physical similarity, but there is a manner in which Sakura holds her chakra-thread and needle, or the way she sets bones with a quick ruthlessness that evokes Rin in his mind.

Of course, this may be a hefty dose of sentiment on Kakashi's part. He is prone to episodes of emotion, unfortunately, and at the end of everything, he had loved Rin...as far as he could love, in any case.

"There," Sakura says now, rousing him out of his impromptu reverie. The cave in which they have taken shelter is cold and damp, and the small fire can barely keep the shadows at bay. Kneeling beside him, Sakura has closed up the long gash in his side and had considerably diminished the throbbing pain of his dislocated shoulder and broken ankle-bone. He probably won't be able to fight for another hour or so, not until Sakura's rapid healing jutsu has finished its work. If he moves (after she has just told him not to), she might just smack him in the back of his head, just like Tsunade-sama.

"What about Gohachiro?" he asks after Sakura smooths down the light undershirt of his chain-mail and packs her supplies back into her case. The case had been a gift from Naruto about five years ago; out of everyone, it had been Naruto who had remembered her birthday, in the middle of rebuilding Konoha. He'd presented it to her, almost as if it was an afterthought; but his eyes shone as she'd exclaimed over the separate compartments, the sturdy little loops for vials of different sizes, the clever flap which could hide extra weapons, just in case.

Sakura loves that bag. Kakashi knows she cleans it after every mission, scrubbing off any trace of blood and checking her supplies with a narrowed gaze. Now, her hands pause in the motion of shifting bottles and needles. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that a deep stillness has come over her.

"I've done all that I could, Kaka-sensei," she answers and Kakashi wonders if she realises that she has just reverted to that childish name she and Naruto had used for him. Her tone is level, more or less; she'd told him to hold still while her chakra had pulled out shards of bark and rock out of Kakashi's wound, and that was the same tone she'd used. Still, he can sense a tight undercurrent in her voice.

Gohachiro is the third member of their cell for this mission. She is older than Sakura by about five years, but seems younger. Now, she is lying on the other side of the fire on the bare ground, on her back and covered by her cloak. Her head nearly completely encompassed by neat white wrappings. She breathes fitfully: short, sharp inhales and exhales that seem far too long.

"Her status, Sakura?" Kakashi asks, keeping his own tone even. Sakura set her shoulders squarely, looking over at Gohachiro's prone body.

"Massive trauma to the right eye, sinus and right frontal lobe. Blood and chakra loss...I've stabilised the blood loss, taichou, but not the chakra."

"Understood." Kakashi looks over at Gohachiro as well. From where his position, leaning against a large rock, Gohachiro seems as if she is simply sleeping.

"She won't make it through the night," Sakura says, very matter-of-factly. "If we were in Konoha, maybe she'd have a chance with Tsunade-sama. As it is..." she shrugs. Kakashi nods.

"I can take first watch, taichou," she says, dragging her way through each syllable very slowly.

Kakashi nods. "Wake me in two hours." He slumps down as much as his burning ribs and Sakura's stare allow. He closes his eyes and floats down into a light sleep.

\--

"What was it like?" Gohachiro asks as they flitted through the trees. She's talkative and cheerful, and she smiles a lot, so much so that the corners of her eyes seem permanently crinkled. Her hair is thick and long, pulled into a single braid. She's excellent at explosives, constructing them at a speed that even Kakashi finds impressive. He'd specifically asked for someone from the Furue clan for this mission, to get through the formidable defenses of the missing nin from Hidden Rock. Gohachiro, she of the quick joke and ready laugh, had been sent.

Sakura gives Gohachiro a quick look over her shoulder. Her expression is vaguely puzzled and Kakashi is amused. She doesn't realise that Gohachiro is attracted to her.

"What was _what_ like?" She pushes off a branch and flips to another.

Gohachiro follows in her wake, almost perfectly landing where Sakura's feet and hands have been before.

"Being on a genin team with Uchiha and the Nine-tails' host!" Gohachiro says this with a laugh in her voice as if it's a wonderful joke. Sakura throws Kakashi a pained glance. He wrinkles his nose, and Sakura, with years of experience in reading beneath the beneath, rolls her eyes and doesn't respond to the question.

Gohachiro doesn't seem deterred by the lack of reply.

"I mean," Gohachiro says much later when they're making camp in their first night of travel; it's as if there hadn't been a four-hour break between that last snippet of conversation and now. "Being on a team with the Jinchuuriki and the last Uchiha would have been something, eh?"

They are weaving vines between the closely-set branches of a flowering tree, creating a platform. It's not level, and it seems springy as Sakura walks on the side she's secured; but it serves its purpose, at least, which is a high, safe place to rest. Kakashi managed to wriggle out of camp-duty, and is perched on the side of a trunk, sufficiently pleased with himself. Sakura ties off a knot and yanks at it to check its strength. It holds well.

"It was something," she agrees, flatly. She presses her lips into a flat line, an expression which appears unbidden on her part. Gohachiro doesn't seem to notice as well, as she sorts out vines before handing them over to Sakura.

"I'm the middle child." She sounds casual, almost jocular, as if this is a clever set-up for a joke. "Between two sisters."

"That's nice," Sakura says, and while she may sound a little sarcastic, Kakashi knows she really isn't. Not when it comes to family. "Civilians?"

"Yeah." Gohachiro snaps a vine in the air like a whip and nods, pleased at the apparent strength. She tosses it over to Sakura. "Kotone, she's the eldest and Nana-chan, she's six."

"Six!" Sakura exclaims, eyebrows raised and Gohachiro grins.

"Yeah, six," she says simply, and shrugs. "But Kotone is beautiful, Nana-chan is cute, and then there's me."

Kakashi can confirm that Kotone is beautiful. He used to date her and by 'date' he means he used to show up at her house for sex. Kotone is the kind of beautiful that causes people to stumble in their tracks. Gohachiro looks like her, in the way a sketch resembles a finished product.

"Sometimes, I get lost between the two of them." Gohachiro sounds very matter-of-fact. "So I figure you probably know what that feels like."

Sakura checks the knots a final time and then walks across the finished platform to test it.

"Gohachiro isn't your real name, is it?" she asks. Her head is turned in Gohachiro's direction, even though her gaze is trained on the tightly woven vines.

Gohachiro shakes her head, dark strands of hair whipping at her round cheeks. "I had a brother before me. He died, so...my father kind of gave me his name. I had mine already but..." She purses her lips a little before speaking. "My father just thought I was _him_ for awhile."

Sakura stands in the middle of the woven vines and stares down at her sandals for a long moment. Her voice is low when she says, "I never thought about it. What you said just now about being on a team with them, that is. I was busy paying attention to them, like everybody else," and that is kind of a jolt to Kakashi. He starts to wonder if his focus had been skewed to the boys; he always thought that Sakura could take care of herself and he's right, mostly.

He's probably wrong. He's a dick, he knows this (he's been _told_ this at least), so he misses things like that.

"But it wasn't anything special, after a while," Sakura says and runs a hand through the flyaway strands of her hair. "It was just me, and those two idiots."

Gohachiro giggles at this, like a very young child. Sakura smiles a little, a sideways twitch of her lips.

She turns around abruptly and points a finger at Kakashi. "Hey taichou! This camp is ready!"

"So loud," Kakashi mutters as he releases the thin layer of chakra he used to stick himself to the trunk of the tree. He steps on the platform: it feels like walking on rough water. Sakura's knots creak under the added load, but they resist admirably. He sinks down into a cross-legged position, scanning the quiet forest around them.

He hears Gohachiro say, "Hey, Sakura-chan. I have something for you." He glances over to see her kneel and pull a small object out of her pack. It's roundish, but not quite spherical. It's actually made up of small flat polygons: triangles, squares, even hexagons, connected together neatly along their edges.

Sakura, who had sat with her legs folded under her thighs, back on her ankles, shifts up to her knees as if that will give her a better view of the object Gohachiro holds out.

"It's a chakra-bomb!" Gohachiro grins at the wary expression that flits over Sakura's face. "Don't worry, it isn't armed. But you feed your chakra into it, as much as you can, and it will only explode for you."

Kakashi hazards a guess: "And when it does, it releases a shock-wave of chakra."

Gohachiro turns to him and nods, a pleased little smile on her lips. "Yes, taichou. The propellant and the igniter, they're charged by the stored chakra." She glances up out of the corner of her eye at Sakura, who hasn't taken it as yet, but is still squinting down at it. Her smile fades and rallies back to life. "If you don't like it--"

"No, no. I like it. Thanks!" Sakura reaches out and plucks it from Gohachiro's palm. "How do I put my chakra in it?"

Gohachiro shows her how to feed her chakra into the skin of the innocuous looking bomb, and then pointing out the tiny hidden button underneath a small triangular flap. "When you need it to explode, you send out just the smallest bit of your chakra into the button there and then press it. The bomb will know it's yours and explode ten seconds after."

"How clever." Sakura's tone is very admiring as she turns the bomb over in her hands carefully. "And so intricately made!"

Gohachiro seems to fight down a blush and she steals a quick glance at Kakashi. He spots her expression out of the corner of his uncovered eye even as he's gazing out to where the edge of the forest descends into a boulder-filled valley. Her overall air appears to be flustered yet very pleased. Underneath his mask, Kakashi smiles a little.

"I'll take first watch," he says and they nod at the command in his tone. "Bed down. We should get to the missing-nins' hideout tomorrow evening."

Sakura wraps her gift in a scrap of cloth wrapping and snuggles under her long cloak. Gohachiro lies down so that she is not too close, but she can see Sakura's face easily.

\--

The nine missing-nin from Hidden Rock have a high bounty on their heads. The largest charge against them is that they've been kidnapping children to harvest hardy red flowers growing in this narrow, wedge-shaped valley strewn with massive stones (aptly called the Valley of the Stone Dragons). These children are also put to work at extracting a potent drug. The drug factory is said to be concealed deep underneath the ground, in an old copper mine.

The allegations were true. Kakashi uses a little trick he had picked up from somewhere: flattening his chakra and sending it out as a series of concentric waves. They pass through the layers of dirt and rock, bounce against objects at a certain level and returning to him with quite a bit of information. After adjusting the levels, Kakashi gains a fairly detailed mental map and perceives that there are about nineteen small children huddled in a small cavern about fifty of his paces below the lowest point of the valley and two hundred paces to the left.

"Gohachiro," he says, and she pops up at his arm. "I need a series of explosives along that ridge there. Five of them, spaced twenty paces apart."

"Simultaneous or one after the other, taichou?" She already has five small black spheres in her left palm. Kakashi can see them trembling ominously.

"One after the other," he confirms. "Two second delay."

" _Hai_ , taichou." She flits off from rock to rock, the ragged edge of her cloak flapping almost soundlessly.

"Sakura, when Gohachiro takes that ridge down, that'll expose a tunnel leading down to the children. Make sure they get to safety and get back to me to deal with the Rock nin."

Sakura flexes her gloved hands and then sprints after Gohachiro. When the explosions break the silence of the valley, a massive sheet of the ridge collapses to reveal a hole large enough to admit a single adult, apparently a curve in the tunnel that came close to the surface. Gohachiro and Sakura disappear down the aperture; almost at the same time a large boulder directly across the valley rolls away, and the Rock nin pour out.

Kakashi pushes up his slanted hitae-ate and gets to work. He's worked his way through three of them already until the nin with kusarigama manages to slice right through his defences and rip into his right side.

Sakura is there as he jumps back, her punch ramming two of the Rock nin right into the soil. Explosions ripple around them and Kakashi leaps over the flying shards, lightning sparking between his fingers. He releases it towards the two he sees hurtling towards him. A dull twinkle lights up in the corner of his Sharingan, and he vaults over the chain and sharp sickle to which it is attached.

As he twists in the air, he hears Gohachiro shout, "Sakura!" An explosion rocks the valley after that hoarse exclamation, and another Rock nin collapses. Kakashi isn't even worried about the children. He's sure that his team has hidden them safely.

He lands and turns to look for that last nin, the sly one with the kusarigama, but the air is saturated with dust and smoke. The Sharingan picks out the shape of Sakura's chakra as she races towards his position, and that of Gohachiro sprinting in from another angle.

The sickle streaks out of the dusty gloom, chain clinking behind it, and the Sharingan tracks its trajectory helplessly. The sharp curved edge strikes Gohachiro on the right side of her face, just beneath her eye. Blood and thick chunks of flesh and bone arch into the air as the sickle rips its way out.

Gohachiro spins around with the force of the attack, arms swinging with somber grace. With her back now towards Kakashi, she stands there almost as if admiring the destruction left by her bombs. She drops to her knees, before falling flat on her face.

Sakura releases a shout of rage and bounds off a nearby boulder, flipping backwards towards where the chain had last emerged: a cluster of pale boulders. Kakashi chases right behind her. The chain shoots out again, the sickle still smeared with Gohachiro's blood. Sakura dodges it and grabs the weapon right where the chain and sickle are attached. She hauls, with all her considerable strength, and the Rock nin is reeled in, the end of the chain wrapped around a slender wrist.

Sakura flings the nin right towards Kakashi, who is already waiting with a blade made of light.

\--

When Kakashi returns from organizing shelter for the children at the closest village, his hastily-dressed wounds are clamouring at the edge of his pain threshold, and Gohachiro is barely alive, somehow. The chill of the cave sinks into the marrow of his bones. Sakura had carried Gohachiro here herself.

"I'll be with you soon, Kakashi-taichou," Sakura says mildly from where she's kneeling on the hard ground beside Gohachiro. Her hands, so different from Rin's and yet the same, are blood-streaked. The air is heavy with the effort of her chakra.

"I can wait, Sakura," he tells her. She nods without even looking at him, and then flinches when Gohachiro speaks in a clotted voice.

"I could see the grass grow in the summer," she says, and the thick yet dream-like quality of her tone raises the hair on Kakashi's arms. "And those long slow days are far from over."

"Gohachiro?" Sakura whispers, leaning close. She brushes strands of hair which were plastered to the prone woman's temple. "Gohachiro?"

Gohachiro doesn't reply; there are other things she says during the long night as she dies, but they are short snippets, like a few disconnected words or someone's name (she breathes out _Sakura_ at one point, when Sakura is trying to urge the layers of her ruined skull through repair; the Rin-like hands tremble only a little).

\--

He wakes up during the last few minutes of Sakura's watch; there is a pink-haired clone standing at the mouth of the cave, and Sakura is back at Gohachiro's side.

The chakra-bomb sits beside her in a forlorn manner. Even without the Sharingan, Kakashi can see the thin glimmering threads of her chakra that she is retrieving from Gohachiro's gift. She weaves it into a small web, and she places it gently over the blood-soaked cloth wrapped around the terrible wound. The chakra glows briefly and sinks down out of sight.

She's trying, even after she had said there had been nothing left for her to do. Kakashi shifts so that she knows he's fully awake.

"Sakura," he calls softly, and Sakura nods; it's really a slow dip of her head, and she appears to struggle to lift it back up.

"Kaka-sensei," she says in a low voice, small like Rin's smile. "I'm going to sleep."

She freezes and then swallows hard as a low rattle floats out from between Gohachiro's dry, parted lips. At the same time, the lovely netting of chakra floats back up and hovers uncertainly over the wrapping. Kakashi thinks that she had still been trying to stop the chakra from leaking out completely. For a ninja, their chakra helps them heal at a faster rate than civilians. Sakura is good at directing the flow of chakra to help the body fix itself, or lend her own to help. She was taught by one of the best.

But there is nothing here to fix anymore.

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> 100demons' request: _I love gen stories with lots of plot and slow burning characterization and action! I'm a fan of stories that explore the psychological effects of being a ninja, especially considering the Third Shinobi War and ANBU. As for pairings-- I don't really mind as long as it's written well, but I'd prefer the major focus to be on the characters and friendships. Also, I would love for there to be more focus on the under-appreciated medics. It pretty much blows my mind that ninja can pretty much heal mortal injuries like it's no big deal; how would this affect medic-nins? What are the limits of being a medic? (Needless to say, I adore Rin and Sakura.)_


End file.
